


Dreams

by LocalVoid



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 104th Training Corps - Freeform, 104th Training Corps Shenanigans, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Backstory, Childhood Trauma, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Nightmares, One Shot, Platonic Relationships, Trauma, kind of??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 10:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19991008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocalVoid/pseuds/LocalVoid
Summary: When Bertholdt wakes in the midst of the night, with a bead of sweat rolling down his temple and his hands trembling with fear, he bumps into a dear friend who, like him, also happened to wake from a bad dream.





	Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not caught up to the manga so this probably diverges from canon a lot!! I just wanted to practice writing while adding in a few headcanons :)

In a pool of vibrant red blood— filling the cracks and crevices of the stone road— rests two rotted teeth. Bertholdt is the first to witness as another fist collides against the man’s cheek, the two teeth shooting out from his drooling mouth like two stray bullets. He’s quite far away from the barbaric scene, and much like everyone else, he observes from afar, a sickening _smack smack smack_ filling the block as the man’s skull bounces against the stone. 

He thinks it’s strange... dozens of eyes observing, exhausted and empty, and yet this man is dying alone. Bertholdt had seen him several times before, in one of the shops that his mother had dragged him along to, and the man would smile at him, talk to him even, even if he was always too shy to muster anything back. And now his blood and teeth are splattered all over the pavement. 

Bertholdt’s skin feels strange-- cold and shaky, and his shoulders especially tense up when the Marleyan guards raise their heavy boots over the man’s temple. It’s confusing to him, because he’s always heard that they _deserve_ this, _us devils_ , but... that shopkeeper had always tried to make him laugh-- albeit he never succeeded-- and greeted him and his mother kindly. Sure, he might be a devil, but he definitely didn’t deserve… _this_.

The small boy tugs on his mother’s sleeve.

“Cover your eyes, Bertholdt.” She walks him away, pushing through the flock of onlookers whose scattered whispers fill his ears. Her voice may sound calm enough to deceive an infant, but he knows better than that. He hears the faint shake in her throat, and he sees the worry in her looming eyes, and it only makes him both colder and shakier, “Remember? With two hands— like you’re playing Peek-A-Boo.”

Peek-A-Boo is supposed to be fun. He’s supposed to laugh and she’d laugh in return, and then she’d chase or tickle him until he begged for mercy. So he didn’t understand why she was taking him for an _infant_. Of course, he’s only recently four, but even a four year old wouldn’t fall for the lack of genuinity in her gaze.

When Bertholdt is about five, he shoots his first bird. His father had finally gathered the energy to get out of bed and take him to practice, and using the rest of his limited strength, he roars triumphantly when the bird nosedives from the clear blue skies. 

This takes Bertholdt by surprise, his father in particular known for being such a soft-spoken, reserved man, and yet his hair is being playfully ruffled and they share a noisy laugh for the first time in a very long time. It takes them what feels like years to walk towards the fallen wings, and Bertholdt can’t help but grin from cheek to cheek when his father continues to praise him. 

“You’ll make a fine warrior.” 

When they reach the bird buried in mud, its crinkled feathers spread about, his father’s praise fades into white noise— nothing but murmurs and fog. The creature is still alive, squawking and flapping its bloody wings in a way that Bertholdt has never seen or heard before. The pellet had pierced straight through, shredding its wings apart and rendering them useless. He towers over it, and it abruptly stops squirming, its beady eyes staring directly into his with what he could only perceive as utter fear, so much fear that it resigns itself to death. 

Bertholdt feels sweat prick at the back of his neck-- all it took for this bird to stop fighting against the inevitable was a well-meaning father telling his young son to pull the trigger. He wonders if this is what the Marleyans had seen when their ancestors had devoured them, and he can’t help but feel sad. It only wanted to fly away with its family, after all. It’s not its fault that he’s a devil. 

That night, and for the next hundred nights, he dreams of the bird. 

Bertholdt is a quiet boy, often buried in the same children’s book he had already read three times over. He especially adores the detailed— although relatively torn— illustrations of all the fantastical worlds in the tales, for they only bring forth the need to fantasize about an escape to the magical worlds depicted in these stories. Although… he couldn’t yet make sense as to _why_ he fantasized so often of _fleeing_. 

The other rowdy five year olds on their street often leave him out of their games because he can never seem to force himself to be as excitable or loud as they are. He hears it from their neighbours on a weekly basis that he needs to ‘come out of his shell’, and his mother always tells him that it’s rude to mumble when people greet him with their hello’s and good morning’s. So, to please his parents, he learns to always give an answer even if it’s just one word.

“Good morning, Bertl.” 

“Hello.”

“How are you today?”

“Good.”

“You really need to speak up, Bertl.”

“Okay.”

One night, during dinner, Bertholdt asks about the devils in the walls. His parents’ jaws suddenly stop chewing, their brows furrowed and daggers in their eyes, almost as if he said a swear word or something. He immediately senses the tension in the air, and still, he asks if all devils are bad.

“Yes.” Is his mother’s answer, quick and to the point. She points to his food, a subtle way of telling him to keep his mouth shut, but Bertholdt still has questions on his mind! He doesn’t understand why they don’t want to answer-- it’s not like it’s the worst question he’s ever asked...

“Is that why the wall devils have to die?”

“ _Yes_.” She repeats, eyeing her husband who merely stares down to his own plate, his curled, bony fists resting on the tabletop.

“But... _we’re_ not bad. We’re trying to help.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

His father finally speaks, but it’s more of a mutter under his breath than a response-- refusing his five year old the sole effort of eye contact. His mother sighs, looking rather sad, and Bertholdt begins to feel sweat prickle at his hairline as he fumbles with his food. He hesitates once more, debating within himself as to whether or not he should poke the growling bear.

“But… but _why_ do they treat us like that if--”

“ _I said it doesn’t matter!_ ” 

The table rumbles when his father’s fist slams down onto it, and Bertholdt flinches so hard that his fork flies out of his hand and onto the floor. There’s rage in his father’s voice-- something very rarely heard from the sickly man-- and although his heart is banging so hard against his ribcage that he feels it might pop out from his chest, Bertholdt looks straight into his father’s eyes, and hidden beneath that hollow green, he sees only fear. 

His father’s fist trembles. 

“You should know better than to ask _stupid_ questions like that!”

Bertholdt’s eyes are wide and his lip quivering. He thought they _wanted_ him to speak up more. “B- But…”

His father’s nostrils flare before he can even finish his thought, and with disgust on his face, he bares his teeth like a feral mutt ready to snap.

“Get to your room! You’re not eating a _single_ thing until you learn your damn place!”

“I- I’m sorry— I’m—” His eyes well up with tears as he struggles to stammer out a coherent sentence to no avail. His mother only watches with pity, as though fighting the urge to walk the small boy away.

Whipping up his finger, his father bangs down on the table once more, pointing to the boy’s bedroom, “Don’t… _Don’t_ make me walk over there.” Although he growls so menacingly deep and threatening that it makes the boy visibly shake, there’s still a pinch of dread in his strained throat, and the lingering fear in his eyes are only more blatant than before. In fact, out of it all, it’s his fearful eyes that Bertholdt can’t shake out of his head. “Just _shut up_ and do as you’re told.”

_Do as you’re told..._

Do as he’s told...

Ever since then, Bertholdt does just that. The grown-ups only seem to love, and praise him when he does what’s demanded of him. It makes sense in his mind, because devils who disobey are _punished,_ punished in the same way the young shopkeeper was _punished_ to death that day. If he ever disobeyed, would it be _his_ blood and teeth filling in the cracks of the pavement instead? Would he even be loved anymore...? 

If he did exactly what was told of him, would the fright in his father’s eyes finally… vanish?

“You’re going to start training, Bertholdt.”

“Okay.”

“You’re going to kill those devils, Bertholdt.”

“Okay.”

“You’re going to eat your mother and become the next Colossal Titan, Bertholdt.”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t think much of it. His mother cries tears of joy-- he assumes it’s joy, anyway. And his father smiles with absolute pride from the bed as he playfully ruffles his son’s hair and holds him close. Bertholdt always took comfort in his cozy hugs.

“You’re going to be a great warrior, Bertholdt. I believe in you.”

He doesn’t protest, and he can’t wait to talk all about it with Reiner later. This is _everything_ he wanted… right? Without this, he’s _nothing_. He knows what they’re saying is true, because he _always_ goes through with what he’s told. He _will_ be a great warrior, he’s sure of it. His bedridden father will be well taken care of while he’s gone, surely. By Marley doctors no less, he’ll finally be given the quality treatment that he’s needed all these years. He’ll be alive and healthy when his son eventually returns, without the fear in his eyes and in his voice, and they’ll all lead better lives as honorary Marleyans. As for his mother, she’ll be...

When Bertholdt is almost nine, he can’t stop shaking. It’s as though he’s been dumped in ice water, his hands trembling so severely that he has to hold them down. 

He knew this day was coming, but when he sees his mother slumped over in shackles, pale and weary with dark bags under her eyes, he feels sick to his core. Vomit crawls up his throat that he forces himself to swallow back down, and he wants to run away. Run away as far as he can, perhaps across the ocean, or to that fantastical land in a book he read once upon a time ago, because he’s so scared and it’s a weight too burdensome for his barely-nine-year-old brain to handle. 

He can’t, though. He can’t run. She’ll just be eaten by someone else, and he’ll be a coward, a traitor, a devil. His father will probably die hating him, and that goes for his mother too, and everything she did for him will be for nothing. And he’s a _warrior!_ Warriors _don’t_ run! The Marleyans might tear off his fingers one by one and ship him off to Paradise if he ever simply thought of it. He _has_ to do this. He needs to do what they’re telling him to. But still, more than anything, he just wants to run, even if it means he'll have nowhere to _run_ to.

She smiles at him, so faint that he almost doesn’t notice, but it fades when she sees the struck horror painted all over his face. The soldiers mutter aloud as they begrudgingly prepare his injection— the one he couldn’t inject himself due his quaking hands. It only makes him feel worse, more akin to a coward, and as they make their way towards him, an animalistic urge boils from the pit in his stomach and he lets out an involuntary, tiny squeak before shielding his eyes like he’s four years old again. One of the soldiers scoff, harshly spinning him around for a better angle of his nape, “Oh, come on now. You’ve seen worse, haven’t you?”

“W- wait, I…!” Bertholdt recoils under their touch, his shoulders stiff as wood and his vision blurry with tears. He forces his words out in between his rapid, short breaths that only seem to be getting faster by the very second, “I- I can’t-- can’t breathe…!”

He’s held into place once again, squeamish in their firm grip. He wishes he had wings so he could fly away from here, far away, but when the image of the writhing bird unexpectedly flashes before his eyes, he freezes completely still. A cold pinch at his neck makes him yelp, his heart beating in his ears, and then everything fades into blackness.

When he wakes up in a cold sweat, gasping for air in his own bed, he instinctively cries out for his mother. His restless rest makes him rise with an aching back due to a peculiar sleeping position, and there are still tears rolling down his cheeks, wet spots forming from where they melt into his bedsheets.

“Mama!”

He wonders if it was all just a bad dream. A nightmare from the amount of anxiety and pressure he’s been under. His mother always came when he had bad dreams-- she somehow always knew-- and would stay in his room until he fell asleep again. She always came. Always.

But there is only silence this time.

“M- Mama!”

Silence.

He’s alone in the dark now, and he doesn’t know what to do. They never trained him for _this_. All he _can_ do is weep. 

Hiccuping, he pulls himself out of bed and wanders into what used to be his parents’ bedroom, now evidently only home to a feeble father, whose figure looks drastically more deteriorated and pale than he remembers. Bertholdt crawls into the bed and curls up next to him, who in his weary state, tightly wraps his arm around the young boy. The man sniffles, it’s obvious he is crying, but there are no words ever spoken between the two. 

Bertholdt covers his eyes with both hands and imagines a different world within the darkness of his palms. A world where he wasn’t a devil, a world where his father wasn’t a scared man, a world where he could fly without his wings being shot down, and where he wasn’t left in the mud to squirm.

Bertholdt shoots his eyes open, waking in a bunk in the middle of some training grounds, and although he’s surrounded by fellow cadets and comrades, and Reiner soundly asleep next to him, he feels utterly alone.

* * *

It isn’t uncommon to hear the panicked breaths of desperation in their barracks in the midst of night, or the frightful gasps of cadets shooting up from a nightmare. So when Armin wakes with a loud whimper, and sweat running down his bangs, he really hopes that no one brings it up in the coming morning.

“Are you okay?” Eren’s groggy whisper from alongside him makes him notably jump.

“H- huh?! Yeah, I’m… fine.” Armin sheepishly responds, caught in the act of catching his breath.

The boy shifts up on his elbows, “Do you want to talk about it?”

The blond hesitates-- he _does_ , he wants to talk about it more than anything, but he can’t bear the thought of looking weak in front of _him,_ “No, you need to rest. We have heavy training in a few hours.” He wipes away the sweat from his forehead, “I just… need some air.”

Armin climbs down the bunk with unsteady hands, Eren watching with concern until eventually falling onto his back again, fast asleep.

On the walk out, the boy ponders to himself. Of course he doesn’t like nightmares, especially the one he just had, where he had been sent on a mission only to be frozen in place by some unseen force as all his comrades around him were devoured. In the far horizon was the silhouette of the Colossal Titan, and in his dream state, he could only stare in awe at its ominous figure. Although it made its steps gradually... Armin still couldn’t move, and he knew that surely, inevitably, it would reach him. 

Eren had been kicking and screaming when he was eaten, then Mikasa, then Connie, then everyone else. Next to him was Bertholdt, who only trembled with fear, his head buried in his knees, and Armin wanted so desperately to grab him and make a plan, or even just comfort him in their final moments, but he still couldn’t move a muscle. Then, coming in their direction was another titan, it’s hand diving straight for his friend.

Indeed, he doesn’t like nightmares, but… he appreciates them. They bring him back to _that day_ , and although time and time again he’s stricken with complete terror, the nightmares force him to face that reality again, force him to be in a situation where there’s a chance he could do something different for a change, where he could be… _useful_. He almost likes to see it as an extension of his training as a soldier, even though they all end in the same gruesome way.

Nonetheless, he needs to stop shaking if he wants to get back to sleep. And when the cooler air bites his skin, and he exhales a deep, full breath, he suddenly feels much better. It’s always too stuffy and humid in the barracks in the summertime. 

Suddenly, he hears a gargle, then the sound of something wet splashing onto the ground. Startled, he spins around, and hunched over the balcony is no one other than Bertholdt retching what appears to be all of last night’s dinner… Albeit, he’s more taken aback as to how he didn’t notice a figure almost an entire foot larger than him.

“B… Bertholdt?!”

The taller boy vomits again, his grip on the balcony so tight that Armin fears he might break it in two. When he turns his head ever so slightly, he looks like he’s been drained of all the blood in his body, his eyes surrounded with dark, purple circles.

“Bertholdt, are you okay?”

Slumping down onto the steps, the cadet speaks in between his heavy breaths, as if swallowing down more vomit, “Yeah… I just… couldn’t sleep…” 

Armin blinks as his comrade makes a visible attempt not to gag once again, and curiosity begins to pick at his mind, “Did… did you have a nightmare?”

There’s a pause, Bertholdt wiping his mouth before wearily responding, “I... guess you could call it that.” 

The smaller boy takes a seat down next to him, “...I had one too.”

It’s silent, except for the singing crickets and a faint brush of wind. It often _is_ silent between them, but oddly enough there’s never a moment where it makes either of them uncomfortable. In fact, Armin likes that about Bertholdt, the fact that he’s a break from the rowdiness of the rest of the crowd, _and_ he’s the only other person aside from Marco who Armin can talk to about books and stories. The three of them are arguably some of the only ones who had gone through the effort of reading out practically the entire library. 

And finally, Bertholdt breaks the silence, scratching his clammy neck as though it’s taking great effort to push forth the conversation, “Uhm… What… was yours about?” 

“It’s always titans," Armin scoffs to himself, "And people I care about being eaten. You were in it this time, actually.”

“...Oh?” Bertholdt tilts his head with interest.

“Yeah, you were the one being eaten.”

“...Oh.” They both begin to giggle, the taller of the two shaking his head, “That’s... unfortunate.” 

“I can never move in my dreams, even if I want to. It’s like... I’m forced to watch as everything happens around me.” Armin releases a worn yawn, “How about you?”

“Hm...?”

“Your nightmare…? You said you had one, right?”

Bertholdt’s smile fades away, “Oh, er…” He rubs at his neck much harsher than before, so much more that it leaves behind a red welt, “It was just… I was dreaming about my parents, well, more my dad this time.”

Armin expects more to the story, but his timid friend doesn’t continue, instead staring down the steps beneath their feet. A badgering voice in his head nags at him that they _must_ be dead, and that’s why he isn’t going on about it… especially if he was from some secluded mountain village that got swarmed during the fall of the walls. Armin ponders for a moment with how to proceed, then decides it’s a good time to try to make him feel... not so alone.

“I... used to get dreams about my Grandpa all the time, especially after he… never came back.” He explains with a sad, yet comforting smirk, “Some were so terrible I’d wake up _crying_. But sometimes... they’d be pleasant, like he’d be reading me a book or doing something... _normal_. Eventually, I appreciated getting the chance to see him again, even if it was just in a dream…”

Bertholdt looks away from the smaller boy, crinkling his brows as though he’s dying to say something, and then finally, “Y- yeah. My dad used to, uhm…” He hesitates for a moment, still visibly conflicted whether to share this aspect of his life with his fellow comrade, “...take me shooting. He taught me how to do it, actually. Sometimes I dream about mundane things like that, too.”

Armin raises his brows, and he feels strangely proud of the older boy for willingly opening up, “Shooting? Were you hunters?”

“Er, something like that, I guess. But after he… got _sick_ , he couldn’t walk around much anymore, and he would never let me go alone. I was really young...” The corners of Bertholdt’s lips raised very faintly at the nostalgic memory, “I mostly just practiced on trees, anyway.”

“I see.”

It’s silent again, the clouds in the sky before them pulling away like stage curtains, revealing the billions of glimmering stars hiding away beneath. They both become captivated in the awesome sight, their heads tilted up and faces sparkling with wonder, the entire universe in their eyes. Armin had always enjoyed looking at the stars, and he had always wondered how they would look beyond the wall, near the crystal clear ocean, or in the sky on a hot air balloon, but lately… he forgets about all of that-- caught up in his nightmares, and training, and anxieties, but on nights like this, it all comes back to him. 

“Your dreams where you can't move,” Bertholdt starts up again, “Could it be that you feel… _useless?_ ”

Armin is taken aback, his eyes falling from the stars with woe, and he can’t help but feel somewhat hurt. The comment hits so close to his heart that his shoulders slump with grief. “E- er…”

Bertholdt widens his eyes. “Oh, I- I didn’t mean-- I just meant that I can relate…” He reassures, raising a hand with a frantic look on his face, “I get a reoccuring one where I’m a bird, but one of my wings are shot down, and no matter what I do, I just keep falling. Or sometimes, I get dreams where I’m heading home, with Reiner, but suddenly I can’t move and he keeps on walking without me.”

“That’s… awful.” Armin simply replies, and he thinks back to the original question that now can’t seem to flee his mind, “I see what you mean, though. Sometimes dreams show us what we really feel, deep down. I...”

“I guess I _do_ feel useless. Everyone here is so much better than me at everything, and I feel like… I’m going to be a liability once we actually become soldiers. I don’t want to watch my friends die because I’m too useless to do anything to help.”

“You… what?” Bertholdt stares at him, and the boy realizes that the words he had just spoke were only spoken in his head, and in reality he’s sitting there with a blank, contemplative look on his face.

“U- uh! Nothing. But… y- you have similar dreams as I do, Bertholdt.” He quickly forces the spotlight away from himself, “Do _you_ feel that way?”

The timid cadet thinks for a moment, “Maybe a little, but… I _know_ I’m capable of things, just like you or anyone else here is. But when I’m trapped in a dream and I can’t move or do anything to change the outcome… I don’t know.” He looks down to his hands with a sigh, “I _do_ get scared, but I feel more sad than anything. Like maybe… I deserve it.”

“For not being capable enough?” Armin completes his thought.

“...I guess so.” He looks into the distant stars and Armin can already tell that he’s clearly holding his words back.

“Well, we’re a lot more alike than I thought.” A cool breeze blows, sifting between the strands of their hair, and whistling a wind song through the cracks of the wood barracks, “If anything, this hell is what brought us together, right?”

Bertholdt’s face falls even further, “Yeah…”

“It... might not be very surprising, but I used to get picked on by a lot of the other kids in my hometown. There wasn’t a corner I could turn without running into one of them. But… if that hadn’t happened, then… who knows. Maybe I would have never met Eren and Mikasa.” Armin reminisces on the far too familiar memory, only to be interrupted by images of _that day_ flashing through his head. Truly, he wishes his life went back to when bullies were his only problem, when he could spend time with his two friends without the persistent worrying about their untimely deaths. He turns his gaze to Bertholdt, “What I saw when Shiganshina fell never left my mind. There was a crack of thunder that made everyone stumble over, and then we saw _it_ peek over the wall, and suddenly… everywhere I looked was blood and body parts and rubble. I’ve had a lot of nightmares about it since it happened, but… I like to think it’s the same for us.” 

Bertholdt gradually goes pale as he retells his story-- it's difficult not to notice, the bump at his throat moving up as he seemingly swallows down the frog in his throat. Armin almost wants to ask him what’s wrong, why he looks like he’s seen a ghost, but before he can, Bertholdt stutters out a bemused response, “H- huh?”

“Oh, I just mean…” The blond boy sheepishly smirks at the realization that his choice of words sounded much less… corny in his head, “As terrible as it was, well… we would have never become _friends_ if that hadn’t happened.”

He half expects Bertholdt to agree, but instead he just looks increasingly miserable, his frown falling with an odd form of sorrow and shame that Armin has never particularly seen on him before. It’s such an eerily unfamiliar expression that he needs to shift in his spot just to feel more at ease. Bertholdt clenches his teeth and exhales through his nose, closing his eyes, “R- Right. I… I’m sorry, Armin.”

Armin tilts his head like a confused puppy, “Huh? Don’t apologize. It’s not anyone’s fault that it happened.” He reassures him, but no matter what, Bertholdt still looks… ashamed, almost resembling a scolded child. It’s so blatant that Armin can’t help but bring it up, “...What’s wrong?”

“I just wish… I…”

“Hm?” The smaller boy waits patiently as he fumbles in his thoughts-- whatever it is, it’s clearly difficult for him to say. He decides to give Bertholdt a hand, “Is... it about your hometown? I know you and Reiner really wanted to return some day…”

“...” He looks unsure, and Armin looks away as a result. 

“...You know, there’s no pressure to say anything at all if you don’t want to.”

“No, I… It’s…” Bertholdt looks down to the ground again, melancholy in his eyes. “There’s so many things I wish I could change, but because of the world we live in, and because they’ve already happened, I… simply can’t.”

Another low breeze blows by, and at the same time, the early morning birds begin to chirp-- a very low purple now peeking at the horizon.

“I have to wait and watch as things just… happen around me. And I just wish…” Armin takes in his words carefully as he trails off to himself, mumbling so softly that the smaller boy has to lean in slightly just to hear him, “...I wasn’t born so _rotten._ ”

He furrows a brow, both concerned and puzzled at the same time, “What do you mean?”

Bertholdt pauses, sadly shutting his eyes again before letting out a brief chuckle. “N- nothing, I think I’m just tired.” He turns to Armin with a big grin on his face, the same familiar, warm grin he does when they’re talking about books in the library, or when they’re having a laugh during lunch with Reiner or Connie or any of their other dear friends, “Thank you, Armin. I feel a lot better now. You’re good at that, you know?”

“O- oh… no problem.” He watches the taller boy stand up to shake off the dust and dirt from his pants. “Are... you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. But we should try to get at least a little sleep before training.”

“Right...” Armin furrows a brow and thinks to himself. It’s times like this that he wishes he wasn’t so good at reading people, because something like this nags at him for at least a week, or more. In most of the fiction stories he’s read, there’s always a moment where a character says one thing but means another, and he doesn’t find out until later the true meaning behind the character’s words; he’s always left trying to read between the lines and inevitably truly _understanding_ the character as much as possible before the story reveals it for him. But… real life isn’t like that. With Bertholdt standing to leave without any closure, with few words-- as he often carried himself-- and even fewer hints… Armin just wishes he could read in between the lines just the same. 

As Bertholdt turns away, his smile falls into a frown. Even when he tries to shake away the weight on his back, to cleanse himself of these traitorous thoughts that could very well _compromise_ the mission, he can’t help but feel deep down in his heart that… he likes Armin, and that scares him. Armin, who’s both intelligent and compassionate, who gives each and every story a chance even if it’s not his genre, who Bertholdt immediately clicks with outside of his fellow warriors, and… who he sees a bit of himself in. 

It hurts. It hurts that he’s the bad guy, that he’s forced to live in this cruel world where clueless children are sent to war, where he has to live with his naive victims who don’t know any better, where he can’t turn back if he wanted to, and where he can’t even ask for forgiveness. It hurts so bad.

His only liberation from these cold chains are when he’s asleep, on the off chance that he’s not having an unspeakable nightmare, or a memory disguised as one. If he’s _really_ lucky, he gets a normal one, where he isn’t a monster, where he didn’t murder the families of his friends, and where he fights alongside them in battle even if it means dying a ruthless death-- because in that world, he has wings, and he’s loved, and he didn’t eat his own mother, and his father wasn’t sick or afraid, and he was just… free. And he calls for it, begs for it, for that freedom and for that fantastical world that wasn’t as merciless as this one, but... he only receives silence.

He glances back at Armin, who lingers down on the steps, still gazing at the stars before him.

_That’s right…_

It’s a gradual stroll back to his bunk, the snores of his comrades echoing in his ears, and the faint glistening light from the night sky lighting his path from the windows. Connie is fast asleep with his mouth wide open, one of Eren’s socks are missing from his foot, and Jean is drooling on his pillow. Marco sleeps in fetal position, shivering, his blanket for some reason nowhere to be seen. 

_These are my…_

_..._

When Bertholdt climbs up to his bed, he notes that Reiner is in the exact same position as when he left him, his face buried in his pillow. He wonders how the soldier is even able to breathe.

_Yeah, that’s right..._

He closes his eyes.

_If this weren’t such a cruel world, then… then maybe we could have even remained friends._


End file.
